Flight Forward: United Airlines Boosts Pilot Training Capabilities With Denver Center Expansion

United Airlines Holdings, Inc. UAL expanded its capacity by opening a new 150,000-square-foot building at its Flight Training Center in Denver.

The new facility will have the potential to train up to 240 more pilots per day. In a press release yesterday, the airline said that it had hired more than 300 pilots to date this year and hired more than 2,300 pilots in 2023.

“We’re growing faster than any airline in the industry and our investments in our pilots and their training are critical to support the unprecedented number of new aircraft United will add to our fleet in the decades ahead,” said CEO Scott Kirby. 

Already the largest facility of its kind in the world, the additional building gives the airline the capability to add 12 more advanced full-motion flight simulators t;o the facility, six of which have already been delivered, the company said.

United’s Flight Training Center has eight total buildings, more than 700,000 square feet of training space, and 46 state-of-the-art full-motion flight simulators. 

With the new building, the Flight Training Center now accommodates 52 full-motion flight simulators and 34 fixed training devices, totaling 86 units. This expansion enables over 32,000 training events yearly and the capacity to train up to 860 pilots daily.

This apart, has announced plans to restart direct flights to Israel, becoming the first U.S. carrier to do so since the Gaza war in October.

United Airlines intends to resume direct flights to Israel in early March, making it the first U.S. airline to do so since the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, reported Reuters. 

United Airlines, based in Chicago, will restart its flights from Newark to Tel Aviv next month. However, it does not plan to resume flights from other U.S. cities until at least the fall. The airline aims to reinstate daily nonstop service to Tel Aviv from Newark on Mar. 6, using a Boeing Company BA 787-10.

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Price Action: UAL shares closed higher by 2.75% to $45.26 on Thursday.

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